As the Jamaica Observer reports, there is a documentary about Joe „Drummie“ Isaacs and Studio 1 Rock Steady in the making. Not bad, eh?

In it, Isaacs, who played on many classic songs at Studio One during the 1960s, speaks of his days working with legendary musicians including Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, Jackie Mittoo, Alton Ellis, Ken Boothe, Toots and the Maytals, the Heptones, Marcia Griffiths [and] Burning Spear.

Macdonald, however, is clearly concerned to offer more than a straight music biog; he grapples at length with Marley’s philosophical and religious convictions, as well as his precarious place above the fray of Jamaica’s post-colonial political antagonism.

Nice article in today’s Observer about how the album „Catch a fire“ changed reggae music.

[P]rofessor [Alleyne], who holds a master’s degree in English from the University of the West Indies, sought to explain that although Catch A Fire marks a defining moment in the internationalisation of reggae […], the militancy and urgency of Catch A Fire were the yardsticks against which other albums such as Kaya, Exodus, Rastaman Vibration, Natty Dread and Burnin were often measured.

Sadly, events surrounding his estate have been anything but consistent with his musical legacy. 2011 marked the 30-year anniversary of the day Marley died of cancer, at the age of 36, on May 11, 1981. In those 30 years, his estate has seen far too many court fights, lawsuits and money-grabs to count. And that legacy of fighting over money doesn’t seem likely to end any time soon.

Bunny Wailer may be the last living “Wailer” – Bob Marley died of cancer in 1981 and Peter Tosh was murdered in 1987 – but no one has done more musically to keep the spirit of Bob Marley alive than The Wailers’ original bassist and bandleader, Aston “Family Man” Barrett, who continues to tour the world with new incarnations of The Wailers, featuring young musicians paired with off-and-on past members from the 1970s.

Watch more photos on whoateallthepies or read nice Bob Marley & The Wailers football stories at timeout

When Marley came to London to play Crystal Palace Bowl in 1980, he didn’t want to do any interviews. Instead, Partridge booked the five-a-side court at Eternit Wharf Sports Centre in Fulham for four afternoons. Anybody who wanted to meet Bob had to challenge him and the Wailers to a match. ‘I remember we took all 11 Wailers up to a sports shop on the Fulham Palace Road to get some kit,’ says Partridge. ‘The shopkeepers didn’t know what had hit them.’

Everything is looked at from only one perspective: that it can be used for something else, however vague the notion of this use may be. (Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception)

The Guardian about legendary DJ David Rodigan and some of his favourite tunes and albums. It must be a mistake, though, to call skinhead music „not cool“.

Catch A Fire – The Wailers
The first proper reggae album and, again, it’s got that historical context: „They brutalised our very souls.“ I first heard it at college. I’d been slightly mocked by my peer group as ska had been cool in summer of 67 but wasn’t so cool when it became rocksteady, skinhead music. This album changed everything; fellow students saying, „Actually, you were right.“ So I stuck a review of it up on the student noticeboard.

Random Quote

“To create a space for left-wing ideas to exist in the skinhead scene. To combat, physically and politically, the existence of far-Right ideas in the skinhead scene. To win back the good name of our subculture from the boneheads and racists. To articulate the connection between the young, working-class, multi-racial skinhead subculture and left-wing ideas.”source: aus dem Programm von RASH NY